brand marketing

Call it customer retention, customer loyalty, or brand affinity: what we’re really after as marketers boils down to one word, and that word is love. There’s nothing so powerful in marketing as the love of a customer, but fostering that kind of love takes patience, time, and maybe a little automation. How to Build and Promote a Customer Loyalty Program Using a Marketing Automation Platform Your marketing automation platform isn’t just a lead nurture platform. If you want to improve customer loyalty, you can apply the same principles and […]

Welcome to the age of the influencer, where consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. For marketers, that means what those reviews say—and what we do with them—has as much to do with our marketing strategy as it does with our customer service record. According to the most recent BrightLocal Consumer Review Survey, 74% of consumers say that positive reviews help them trust a business more, and nearly 54% of people will visit that company’s website after reading those positive reviews (how’s that for inbound?). Consumers […]

So, You Decided to Run Terrestrial Radio Ads… Why: You wanted to achieve mass reach, with a low CPM, to reach a captive audience. You know your target demo is there, and 93% of U.S. adults still listen to AM/FM radio each week! It’s a no-brainer, right? Right? Radio listening is quite literally “wireless”. There is no meter to measure actual usage. There are no tickets sold, there are no circulations audited. There is no quantifiable “click-through” to point back to. The ratings systems of Nielson, Arbitron and holding companies […]

It is all too common that digital marketing agencies narrow their focus on only the trendiest marketing tactics. Everyone is buzzing about the latest feature of SnapChat or the newest PPC ad style on Google. You see countless blog posts, social media posts and think-pieces hailing the next great thing in marketing. What’s worse is that so many of these digital marketing agencies then push their clients toward executing these “Tactics of the week” without a full understanding of what they can actually do for the client and the results they can deliver. It’s the marketing equivalent of throwing stuff up against a wall and seeing what sticks.

It’s never too early to start forecasting what’s going to be ‘the next big thing’ in the digital marketing and tech landscape in 2017. emfluence has compiled trends and expectations from across our agency team members to bring you an array of predictions for what to look for, and more importantly plan for in 2017. The boldest prediction of all? 60% of the time our predictions are right, every time.

Is it obvious that Instagram Stories is a Snapchat rip off? Absolutely. Does it matter? Not in the least. If you already have Instagram, you now have the feature power of Snapchat behind it. Without the trouble of building and managing a completely separate channel and audience.

Gen-Z members are breaking the molds of Millennials that came before them. Marketers need to be on notice with this up and coming generation now that they are entering the workforce. They have purchase power, knowledge and you are going to have to work to get them as customers. Gen-Z have expressed distinct differences in their behaviors and preferences, but they are also continuing down certain paths that have been laid out by Millennials.

We recently partnered with client Boulevard Brewing Co. on a paid media campaign around their annual beer and music festival, BOULEVARDIA – including Facebook’s Canvas Ad Units. Based on the results we saw, we are full Canvas converts – and it’s not the Boulevard beer talking.

If you are a digital marketer, then odds are that you touch content production in one way or another. That also means that you're well aware of the myriad of tools out there that can help streamline development and help you produce like a pro. This post highlights a few of my favorite "content things" that I use on a daily basis to improve and streamline the production process. Let's get one thing out of the way: these are not content hacks. These are tools, plug-ins and browser extensions. "Hacking" […]

You can blog and publish content regularly. However, if your site content isn’t converting your website/blog readers into actual contacts – then what’s the point or value behind it? Every marketer inevitably hits a content wall and bandwidth restrictions to keep churning out blog posts, social posts, infographics, videos, podcasts…you name it. The key is to keep the content and conversion wheels in motion, even while you’re not at the actual wheel creating it.

Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que, a long time fixture in National Barbeque Capital Kansas City, has come a long way from it’s humble roots in a neighborhood corner gas station. Joe’s has turned into a famous spot for BBQ aficionados, celebrities and fans alike. With their growth, Joe’s Kansas City recognized that their brand was underserving one large area of their growing fandom: the internet. In early 2016, Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que tapped Kansas City-based digital agency, emfluence, to bring Send Joes KC BBQ to life online.

We’re currently in the midst of a social arms race around live video streaming integrations and roll-outs across Facebook, Twitter, and other major social players. Live video streaming, amongst other next-generation Web innovations like virtual reality headsets, the Internet of Things (IoT), and other wearable technology, all make up what many digital experts and Web data scientists like John Markoff and Tim O’Reilly experts have already dubbed “Web 3.0.” Web 3.0 can be summarized as the “connective intelligence and learning of all Web users and devices – or all of your things talking to the other things about all of the things.”

The 2016 KCDMA AMBIT's Award show was a great night for the emfluence team and our wonderful clients! This year, the gala was held at the Overland Park Convention Center and was themed with Broadway musicals. Our team selected the musical "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" because…why not, it's important to have a little fun when celebrating all that hard work! Best in Show! Tyler and I took home the Best in Show award for our social media campaigns and analytics dashboard work for the Center For […]

Today Instagram announced that it will be lifting its previous 15-second cap on video capabilities in favor of the new 60-second format. For a long time brands have been confined into figuring out ways to share their message on the creative social media giant in a 15-second format. With 4x that amount now available, brands have more time to get inventive but why the big change all of a sudden?

Boaty McBoatface sounds like something a kindergartner would say, or it may remind us of Theodore Tugboat, but it probably shouldn’t be the name of the $300 million dollar research vessel. As the latest instance of the internet getting the best of an advertising campaign, Boaty McBoatface takes the stage as one of many well-planned engagement campaigns that had an unplanned outcome.

On any given day we are exposed to a multitude of advertisements every minute of every hour of every day. Whether you are hearing an ad from your music streaming service or scrolling through your newsfeed, chances are you saw at least a few ads in that short interaction. Because of the amount of advertisements we are bombarded with, breaking through the clutter is now more important than ever before. Brands from many different services and industries are finding new and innovative ways to combat the noise to get their […]

Over the past few months, I have had the opportunity to work on a few different website projects that all engage with different and unique industries. As different and unique as each of these projects were, the one thing that remained constant was the need for a simpler, more condensed navigation menu. Some of these projects had massive navigational menus with multiple sub-menus and even a sub-sub menu (don’t ever go sub-sub, that’s just too far). Regardless of the size of the current menu, the challenge was the same. How […]

As a marketer, you've been hit over the head with the value and importance of a well-rounded content strategy for a few years. It's the topic of conversation because it's one of the most critical pieces of a sound inbound marketing strategy. In Digital Marketing, it's an arms race to get eyeballs and no matter what your weapon of choice you're going to need ammo, and there's no cheat code for unlimited ammunition (if there IS a cheat code, drop me a line). Suffice it to say, having to reload […]

It’s been a year full of knowledge on our emfluence blog page where we covered everything from Email send best practices to Minions! If you missed some of our top posts from this year now is your chance to get caught up. Below you will find a quick recap of our top 10 ranked blog posts of the year and links to the original articles, enjoy!

If you’re like me, and check Instagram a few (hundred) times a day, you have probably noticed that your feed has included a lot more “Sponsored” posts, aka “ads,” recently. That’s because, in September 2015, Instagram gave access to all brands to advertise on their platform, opening up a new way for companies to engage in the social space. Its no longer just a way to build a brand by having a profile; it now allows brands to push products and promote themselves to just about anyone. Instagram advertising is […]

It’s been quite a year for emfluence in the award category! We won a total of 15 awards this year, 13 of them were from the KCDMA AMBIT awards, and 2 were SMCKC AMPS awards. The AMBIT awards are judged on measurable goals and results with the AMPS awards being judged by social media professionals. 2015 Awards: Ambit: Email: New Member Onboarding: Community America Credit Union The Goal: Community America Credit Union has over 25+ locations in the Kansas City area and continues to grow with new customers. It became […]

Not too long ago (a decade or so), being in SEO meant figuring out the best “link farms” to submit your site to as well as trying to load each of your pages with as many keywords as possible. While some of these strategies are still around, they are usually not recommended. Keywords still play a very important part in your SEO strategy and, of course, having the right links to and from your site is critical, but not in the way it used to be. It is no longer […]

Over the last year, I’ve attended a few banking conferences and a hot topic that’s often brought up is the future of the bank branch. In a recent survey performed by Javelin Strategy and Research, 23% of consumers said they prefer to bank online over the in-branch experience. 40% of millennials would consider banking without a branch, according to Accenture. While banks have responded to the growing demand for online banking preferences, such as mobile deposit, the big question is what is to become of branch banking? Source: Accenture Last […]

With Techweek concluding recently, here is a run-down on some cool tools you can use for your business with helpful advice from Techweek speakers. So, you are in the process of creating your own business. You’ve spent countless hours brainstorming ideas, building the website, designing and re-designing, and getting the final product out of the window. You’ve made it this far, but you could use a little help on some internal aspects: organization, SEO, content creation, possibly building tools for your site, or even email marketing. Seems like a lot […]